I told him not to bother, and that I would check with Mr. Robinelli. I looked up the address of the Yard, and went back to the car and found it on the city map. There was enough time to go check it out. It was over in the big busy commercial harbor where a dozen freighters were loading and off-loading, where industrial smog hung low and heavy in the heat, where the air stank of chemicals, and where, in that manufactured haze, some huge piles of sulphur gleamed a vivid and improbable yellow. I parked by the office of the Gibson Yards, and I could see the Buccaneer at a dockside mooring. Two men in khakis were working topsides. She had a lot of brightwork, and I didn’t envy anyone the housekeeping chore of sluicing the local grime off her every day. Robinelli was chunky and brusque, a three telephone, four clipboard, five fountain pen man, a trotting fellow with no time for small talk. I represented myself as spokesman for a group internrested in chartering the Buccaneer for a cruise to Yucatan, say twenty days. Ten in the party. Would it be available anytime soon? At what rate?
He jumped in his desk chair and scribbled on a pad. “Call it an even three thousand. Includes food, steward service. Crew of four. Bring your own booze. Everything else laid on.” He spoke to me loudly, with a whip-crack in his voice, and a thin woman with a limp came at a halting half-trot to hand him a clipboard. He snapped through the top pages. “She’s open as of July 10th for thirty-two days. Have to know by June 30th the latest. Certified check in full two days before departure. No charter passengers sixty-five or older. Insurance provision. Cruises at fourteen knots. Sixteen hundred mile range. Radar, salt water conversion unit, draws nine feet, seven passenger staterooms, three heads with tub and shower. Anti-roll fins. Go look at it.” He scribbled a note, handed it to me. “Let me know. In writing.”
l took Chook down to the dock with me. A husky kid with a blunt indifferent face, big freckled biceps, a khaki shirt tailored to fit as tightly as his young hide, looked at the note, said the Captain had gone ashore for the day and we were welcome to look around. We took a quick tour.
The conversion was well done. She had become luxury transportation without losing her businesslike flavor.
Topside again, I said, “Thanks.” Stuck my head in the engine room. “Solid old lunkers,” I said. “With that big slow stroke, they should live forever. But in the conversion, didn’t they put in a different precombustion system?” I had read the dirt under his nails accurately. Pleased alertness washed away the air of indifference, and in about four minutes he told me more that I cared to know about the brute diesels in the Buck.
“I heard about her from a friend of mine who had her on charter. Cal Stebber.”
“Who?”
“A very important man. Short, heavy, very friendly. He was on her last summer in Naples. He was down there on a land deal.”
“Oh, him! Yeah. Nice guy. But it wasn’t a charter, exactly. We had a three week layover at that Cutlass Yacht Club on account of one job ended there, and we had to pick the next bunch up there, so Mr. Stebber made a deal with Captain Andy to stay aboard for a while. Sort of a dockside charter. Captain Andy got hell from Robinelli. Hell, if he hadn’t turned in the money Robinelli wouldn’t have known a damn thing about it. I think it was fifty a day they settled for. And the deal was that Mr. Stebber had some people he wanted to look real good for, so we were briefed to say, if anybody asked us, friends had loaned it to Mr. Stebber.”
“I know Cal lives right here in Tampa, and I had his unlisted number and didn’t bring it. Forgot his address. One of those cooperative apartments on Tampa Bay. You wouldn’t have it aboard, would you?”
“Golly, I don’t think so. He got on and he got off at Naples, and we were tied up the whole time. He paid cash. There wouldn’t be any reason to…” He stopped and tugged his ear, looking into space. “Wait a minute. There was something. Yeah. Bruno found it when he was sweeping up after Mr. Stebber left. One cuff link under something. Solid gold with some kind of gray-looking jewel in it. Captain Andy had that phone number, or got it somehow, and when we got back to Tampa he got hold of Mr. Stebber and…” He turned to face forward, and yelled, “Hey Bruno. Here a minute.”
Bruno, lanky and unprepossessing, came shambling aft, wiping soapy hands on his thighs, staring with great glint-eyed approval at Miss McCall.
“Say Bru, you remember the guy you took that gold cuff link back to last year?”
“Give me twenty bucks, man. I remember pretty good.”
“Where was it you had to go?”
“West Shore Boulevard, below Gandy Bridge, like near McDill. Some number, I don’t remember. Pretty nice place, man.”
“Could you tell this man something so he can find it?”
“Don’t lean or I come up empty. Give me room to think. It had a number, and it had a name. Pale color building, and like four buildings hooked together, him in the one closest to the water, top floor. Maybe seventh floor, eighth floor. Anyhow, the top one. Something about the name, it didn’t make sense. I got it! West Harbour. Even spelled wrong. Oh-you-are instead of oh-are. And no harbor there, man, no matter how you spell it. Docks and a half-ass breakwater and more little sailboats than they had little cruisers, but nothing I’d call a harbor.”
As we headed away from there, Chook said, “Half the time I don’t know what’s on your mind. I have to just stand there, looking relaxed. It’s a weird way to come up with his address, McGee.”
“There are probably other ways. Maybe not too many, if he’s quiet and careful. People leave tracks. You don’t know where they left them. If you range back and forth across territory where you know they’ve been, then you have a better chance of blundering across something. You just saw good luck. I’ve had a lot of bad days too. If Stebber wants to play, or if he doesn’t want to play, either way I’m glad to know where he is. I think we’ll call him right from there.”
It was almost three thirty by the time I located West Harbour. It was rich and tasteful, the grounds spacious and landscaped, the architecture styled to avoid a cold and institutional look, without severe geometry or mathematical spacing. The main entrance drive split into three seperate drives-delivery, guests and residents. I left Chook in the car, the keys in the ignition.
“I am going to be out of there by four thirty or sooner. I won’t send word. If I want to take longer, I’ll come down and tell you myself. So at four-thirty, you drive right out of here, stop at the first pay phone you can find, tip the police, annomously, that something very strange is going on at the Stebber apartment, West Harbour, the tower nearest the waterfront, top floor. And then find your way back to the airport. Turn this car in. Here’s your airplane ticket. If I don’t show for the seven o’clock plane, get on it anyway. Take the other car back to the marina. Here are the other car keys. Check Arthur off the boat, lock it up, go check into a motel. Make it… Mr. and Mrs. Arthur McCall. Tomorrow morning, find the Chamber of Commerce. They all have visitors’ books. Sign in under that name, with the motel address, including the unit number. Get it?”
“I got it.”
“Need money?”
“No. I’ve got enough.”
I used a pay booth in the West Harbour lobby to phone Stebber’s unlisted number. “Yes?” the same voice said, in the same cool modulation.
“Me again, smirking girl. A little off schedule.”
“The gentleman you were asking about before, sir, would be happy to meet you at the bar at the Tampa Terrace Hotel at five o’clock.”